Left, right want Obama 'question time'

A politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos on Wednesday will launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, urging President Barack Obama and GOP congressional leaders to hold regular, televised conversations like the extraordinary exchange in Baltimore on Friday.

Original endorsers include Grover Norquist and Eli Pariser, Joe Trippi and Mark McKinnon, Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey, and many more, including Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ana Marie Cox and Nate Silver. The steering committee is made up of Micah Sifry, David Corn, Mike Moffo, Mindy Finn, Jon Henke and Glenn Reynolds.

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POLITICO asked White House senior adviser David Axelrod about the possibility of regular question time on Monday, before the online campaign was announced, and he said the president's aides were more likely to look for one-shot opportunities for Obama to engage with Republicans.

"The thing that made Friday interesting was the spontaneity," Axelrod said. "If you slip into a kind of convention, then conventionality will overtake the freshness of that."

David Corn, Mother Jones's Washington bureau chief, describes how the new campaign came about: "It's hard to imagine all of us agreeing on anything (except perhaps John Edwards's future in politics). But we had an idea that transcends ideology and cable-talk squabbling and blogosphere bickering. On Sunday evening, a group of endorsers worked on a Google document of a shortened version of my original draft. Sharing ideas via e-mail, we quickly resolved any disagreements. Moffo found a designer who cooked up a nifty logo: a campaign-style button declaring, 'Demand Question Time.'

"None of us are naive and believe that implementing question time will cure what ails our country and our political process. We do realize that if QT does become a Washington routine, politicians and their aides will do what they can to game it to their advantage. But even though there are problems with the presidential debates — which have been taken over by the political parties and a corporate-sponsored commission — those events still have value. If you want more question time — even if only for its entertainment value — you can saddle up with dozens (and maybe it will turn into hundreds, thousands and millions) of your fellow Americans in calling on our elected representatives to show us their best stuff on a regular basis."

Demand Question Time invites visitors to sign a petition: "We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama's January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and educational. The exchanges were substantive, civil and candid. And in a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule. ...

"So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly — and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries. We also urge the President and the Republican Senate caucus to follow suit. And we ask the President and the House and Senate caucuses of his own party to consider mounting similar direct question-and-answer sessions. We will ask future Presidents and Congresses to do the same. It is time to make Question Time a regular feature of our democracy."